The World Bank is partnering with tech companies, nonprofits, and cab-hailing services in Asia and Latin America in an effort to improve transportation services and ease congestion in different parts of the world. Under an open data license, the Open Transport Partnership will give access to GPS data taken from taxis to transportation agencies in several countries to help them devise better traffic and safety solutions

Potential leaks of user data collected by online services will be one of the major threats in 2017, according to Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab. A survey conducted by Kaspersky last month showed up to 78 percent of users considering quitting social networks, partly because of concerns over spying.

Hands down, the award for the biggest security breach revelation in 2016 goes to Yahoo, which sustained two major hack attacks in recent years, one of them the largest ever, with more than one billion accounts compromised. But 2016 was also the year of ransomware, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and a few other disturbing intrusions.

Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.